The odds were stacked against Grimm from episode 1. It was a new, hour-long, fairy tale-based drama with a procedural hook debuting on a Friday night. But even with its challenges, it also proved it has more bite than anyone anticipated, debuting to 6.5 million viewers and maintaining steady numbers throughout the season. So when it was recently renewed for a second season, executive producer David Greenwalt admits it put “a little bit of a skip” in their step. But the time to celebrate was brief, as the massive task of closing out their season lies before them.

In a season that has seen werewolves and witches (or, in Grimm-speak, Blutbaden and Hexenbiests) and every creature in between, the end of the season will spare no monster. There’s a take on “The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs” story, an episode with a bridge troll, Cinderella “as you’ve never seen it before” around episode 20, a return from the refrigerator repairman Bud (Danny Bruno) who appeared in a few episodes this season (“He comes back big-time in one of the episodes,” fellow executive producer Jim Kouf previews), and bigfoot. “We’ve got a lot of things we want to deal with in these episodes,” says Greenwalt.

It all begins tonight, with an episode (the first of uninterrupted new episodes leading to the finale) that sees the return from resident Hexenbiest Adelind (Claire Coffee) and the introduction of new recurring character Rosalee (Bree Turner). And this time around, Adelind’s return will likely throw Hank’s (Russell Hornsby) world into a spin. That is, if Adelind was indeed who Greenwalt was talking about when he told EW that Hank would be “falling in love with someone he shouldn’t fall in love with.” That story line, added the producing pair, is one of a few that will yield “surprises” in Nick’s (David Giuntoli) life as we launch into the last batch of episodes.

One such unexpected occurrence took place in the last new episode, when Nick’s trusted Grimm adviser, Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell), finally got a chance to meet Nick’s girlfriend, Juliette (Bitsie Tulloch). This melding of Nick’s two thus-far separate lives will soon ramp up in major ways, they said. “We have a big scene coming up with Monroe, Juliette, and Nick,” Greenwalt said. “She wants to thank Monroe for what he did for her, so there’ll be a lot of crossing of these two worlds coming up.”

And as for the finale, Greenwalt and Kouf were coy, saying there “are a couple of big cliffhangers in it that you definitely want to stay tuned in to both see and see what happens after.” But on a larger scale, Greenwalt says the end of the season focuses, fittingly, on Nick as a Grimm. “We’re going to see him becoming an even more capable Grimm and really grow into his Grimm abilities. And a certain teacher is going to come along and help him with some of that. [Season 2] is going to be more of the same, but bigger and better – and on the same budget,” jokes Kouf.